a very short biography

I joined Army because I wanted to, forgive the cliché, serve the country even though at that time Gen Pervez Musharraf, a dictator and a usurper, was also serving the country. But back then my understanding of the words ‘dictator’ and ‘usurper’ was only superficial. Two years later I passed out foolishly regurgitating the oath that we were all made to undertake in front of a crowd that kept laughing derisively when certain parts were read aloud. It was a shameful act. But I was a coward. So, I passed out having undertaken the oath that none of us really cared about.

In 2007, Gen Musharraf declared a state of emergency under article 232 of the Constitution of Pakistan but then issued a Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) which was an “extra-constitutional” act. The Supreme Court later said that Gen Musharraf had done all that “in the interest of the State and for the welfare of the people” and also stated “the fact that the Constitution was not abrogated, but merely held in abeyance”. Now, that’s semantic wizardry that Joyce would be proud of. I tried to remember whether the oath had mentioned any extra-constitutional things I was allowed to do in the interest of the State or for the welfare of the people but couldn’t think of any. All I could do was admire the General and his cohort for coming up with ‘merely held in abeyance’ as it showed their transcendence of the ordinary spacetime and their ability to create blackholes out of nothing. So, I kept serving the country. Because I was a coward.

In 2011, US helicopters entered Pakistani airspace from our Western border and flew all the way to Abbottabad, attacked a residential compound near PMA, killed Osama Bin Laden and flew back without anyone doing anything about it. The man-in-charge of doing something about such things at the time plainly told us we didn’t know what was happening when it was happening. The kind of explanation that you would accept under no circumstances if it were coming from a sentry standing watch on a guard post. But I took him on face value and went about serving the country. Because I was a coward.

In 2017, the elected Government of Pakistan issued a notification regarding the “guilty” few in the Dawn leaks case. A serving officer of Pakistan Army, promptly tweeted “the notification is rejected” making it quite clear to anyone with a bit of brain that we do what we do, that we get what we want to get, and that we are answerable to no one in this country. It was clear to me too by then. But I kept serving the country. Because I was a coward.

Then on December 17, 2019, a special bench of IHC handed over death sentence to Gen Pervez Musharraf for having committed high treason. Anyone who does believe that the Constitution of Pakistan is, or ought to be, inviolable and supreme must know what the Article 6 of the constitution states. One can argue about one or another legal technicality, whether the case against Gen Musharraf should have been lodged for what he did on 12 Oct 1998 instead of what happened in 2007, and whether many other people who committed high treason in the light of Article 6 should have been named in the case. But the fact remains that he was a dictator who acquired power through unconstitutional means and after having assumed the role of Chief Executive of the country went about legalizing what he had done with some pliant judges ready to grant him what he wanted. Gen Musharraf did commit high treason as defined in Article 6 of the Constitution, IHC judgement notwithstanding. That is my view.

After the judgement was passed, a serving officer once again issued a statement telling the nation that the decision by IHC had been received with “a lot of pain and anguish by the rank and file of Pakistan Armed Forces”. He also said that Armed Forces of Pakistan expected that justice would be dispensed in line with the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. I cannot speak for anyone else but I am still struggling to feel the “pain and anguish” that I am supposed to feel. But like the good soldier that I have always been whose loyalty, first and foremost, is to the institution rather than the Constitution of Pakistan or the Government or people of Pakistan or any other such trivial thing, I am determined to serve the country while at the same time trying to feel the “pain and anguish” and fake it if necessary. Because I am a coward.

playing Villa-Lobos’ Prelude – I

Tags

Classical Guitar, Classical Music, Guitar, Guitar Music, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Learning Guitar, Music, Playing Guitar

It’s been almost two years since I first picked up a classical guitar after listening to Gerónimo Giménez’  La Boda de Luis Alonso – the marriage of Luis Alonso – played by Pablo Sáinz Villegas. The real motivation behind it was to be able to play that piece some day. I am not good enough to even try it as yet but it’s fair to say that I have come a long way from those early days of frustration, thanks, mostly, to an online forum where a Frechman teaches classical guitar to nobodies like myself.

Today, I’m posting one of Heitor Villa-Lobos’  five Preludes: the first one. It is said that Villa-Lobos composed these Cinq Preludes after he met Andrés Segovia, circa 1930. Segovia was in Motevideo, seeking refuge from the Spanish Civil War, and made many trips to Brazil where he met with Villa-Lobos. Some titles have emerged over time for almost all of these five preludes, so, I’d like to mention – as a matter of scruple – that Prelude No. I was originally titled Homenagem ao Sertanejo Brasileiro – Melodia Lirica (Homage to the dweller of the Brazilian Sertao – Lyrical Melody). There’s a strong element of Chopin’s Romantic lyricism to it, and it follows a tripartite ABA form. It is in the key of E minor.

My interpretation of this piece is based on the arrangement by Frederic Zigante. I do not have a good microphone – something I know I must acquire asp – so I recorded directly on to my PC and therefore ended up with a lot of background noise. I hope you guys won’t mind that!

demencia

Tags

English Poetry, Free Verse, Poem, Poetry, Verse Libre

Because the madness
can not be trammeled
one can often see
an ant
with its mandibles digging
deep into the belly
of its sister,
creeping on the kitchen
tiles, looking perhaps
for a place to sit down
and guttle it.

writing your name

Tags

English Poetry, Free Verse, Literature, Memory, My Diary, Poem, Poetry, Verse Libre

I build coliseums:
standing tall, desolate,
pinnacles of fate gone wrong,
stones falling apart in the ruins of time,
death hung in air.

I create illusions:
sun mirrored in the sands,
molten coal tar runways
floating in the distance,
parallaxes beating the senses.

I make those heavenly runs,
maddening chases,
after the dragonflies
beyond the frontiers of desire;
and I hunt golden midges, painted,
with big bulging eyes,
forever pirouetting
above burning candles,
oblivious to the hapless end.

I spoil the canvas with blots:
runic patterns of calligraphy.

Your name my love,
it has the grandeur of coliseums,
the deathly lure of illusions,
charms of desire unfulfilled,
written on canvas, it is my objet d’art.

And still I fail miserably,
because ****,
I write your name with a quill
on papyrus, again and again,
endlessly,
and I can not go beyond !

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Tags

English Poetry, Existentialism, Poetry, Verse Libre

“What then shall we choose”,
queried Kundera, “weight
or lightness?” But I
was cocooned in the duvet
of nescience.

One night,
however, I sat on the doorsill,
outside my house, watching
a polythene bag lying flat
on the cobbled street:
unruffled. Then perhaps
in concert with music
of the spheres – a knelling
of some divine carillon – the wind stirred
itself and the bag billowed
(emplaning a rare moment
of its glory); it chandelled,
spinning tardily like a dervish
pirouetting on his toes. Light,
as the venous wings
of a pierid butterfly, it glided
on and I knew it would land
on a waste yard and the wind
would stop. Happenstance? Uh-uh.

I have learnt, regrettably,
I can
not choose either weight
or lightness. ‘Being’
being a spectre, a presage
of dissolution: devolving eyes,
lips, limbs, hearts –
clay devouring clay. We are
all flying dutchmen
seafaring the troubled waters.

Insentience

Tags

English Poetry, Existentialism, Poetry, Verse Libre

Livid silver rakes the figures prostrated
in transit. Frozen aluminium glints beneath
pallid flaccidity of flesh. The smell is chlorhexidine.
Two dieners enter this quiesced little vacancy
(one’s swinging a keychain). They look
at me, how ugly,
stop, ours is such a dirty job.

The butchers peel the ugly lamb. Two immortal
wounds – stray bullets, of course. A camera pops out.
Smile, little fella, say bleeeed.
I can not blee… anymore, bastards. A brassy
flash ! stuns me ! Finish him up and let’s run; it’s
late already. Two hands in white gloves fix
my jaw in haste – a gauze bandage round my
head and under the chin. Another two ‘finish me
up’ and off they go. I await deliverance.

Nobody comes. Last year a friend had lost
his brother and father, both, in a carnage –
we’re mere marionettes dancing to the angels.
I’d wanted to make a condolence call but couldn’t. I was
busy, just too busy, basking in the riviera.

Outside, the traffic. The clamour
of a collective ecstasy: people shouting,
laughing, wading through shadows, trampling
upon others’ shadows. The shadowy horde
rushes forward like a drove of bovids
barging across an african void
when chased by a predator.
Forward, forward, until it
stuns itself…one day,
perhaps yesterday, I
had belonged to that horde.

_________________

ps: written sometime around Dec 2009.

Of the Poseurs

Tags

A Culture of Excess, Claptraps, My Diary, Opinion

I remember Milan Kundera referring to the phrase a culture of excess (coined by Salman Rushdie) in Testaments Betrayed – An Essay in Nine Parts, and then going on to say how beautifully Rushdie had encapsulated a whole phenomenon in just four words. I agree. It is precisely what rules our society at the moment. Among other things, the term applies to all kinds of immoderate and uncompromising behaviours we are used to experiencing around us: the religious fanatics, the misguided pluralists, the feminists who equate feminism to misandry, the men suffering from sexist prejudices, and the moral police, etc. We have too much of everything bar some sanity and tolerance. We live in a world living at the margins of rationality.

Of all the aforementioned categories of people, it is the moral police that I find the most unbearable and hypocritical. Lets refer to them as poseurs for convenience and brevity. If you ever come across someone actively publicizing how they prevented something bad from happening, followed by an exaggerated account of the extent of evil that was in the offing, you should know you’ve found one of our poseurs. If you’ve never come across one already, you can find them fraternizing in gregarious bien pensant exhibitionism that social networking sites are becoming: you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, and we can both experience the ecstasy of a boy seeing a naked woman for the first time! The ritualized and theatrical advertizing of one’s moral excellence while committing offences oneself, intolerance for everything that is not in tandem with one’s own ideas and beliefs, that’s how it goes. The idea is to get acknowledgement for one’s (non-existent) goodness and a general reproval of others. And a lot of it has got to do with ego coming into play.

Now let me tell you a little story: X was involved in an event where a kid was beating a dog with a nailed rod. X saved that dog, slapping the kid in the process with the kid falling over. This led to the parents of that kid coming to X‘s home to complain. As per X‘s own account, he/she defended her act of slapping the kid. Afterwards, X posted on a social networking site telling in minute detail how badly the dog had been injured and how sad he/she had felt about it’s imminent death. X then reflected on the degenerate morals of the kids family (re: how the parents had failed in their upbringing of that kid) – all on that social networking site!

Well, I think it was very unfortunate that a poor old dog was beaten to death, and I admire X for trying to save that dog’s life but I also think X went over the board when he/she slapped the kid. So, I let X know that it’d have been wiser not to slap the kid but to make him understand that what he was doing was downright cruel, much to the displeasure of X. I knew instantly that it might turn into pointless arguments so I resigned myself. Someone else also made the mistake that I did and ended up annoying our very dear X. It was then that I realized that it was a case of conspicuous behaviour aimed at attracting attention alone. Because if it wasn’t, I’ve a question for you: how do you think you’ve stopped a kid – not your own kid, remember! – from doing something violent by slapping him/her? Surely, you have only incited further violent behaviour from that kid, eh? Because I think most of the kids are reactionary. But that is not important. Getting support from your internet friends (slating those who seem to disagree with you in the process) is important, and saying thank you’s for their support is even more important. So much for spreading the good.

In my opinion, one of the ideas behind moral policing is to promote oneself as a proper, nonpareil, saintly being. Another is to make everyone conform to your views. Yet another might be pursuit of power – no matter how little of it you can have, it always makes you feel godlike. And social networking sites help us achieve just that with little and no effort. We can make friends with like-minded people even if everyone detests us in our real life because of our idiotic behaviour, promote ridiculous causes, and compete for a little glory in some abstract way. Everything aimed at disindividualizing the world, sadly.